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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade.  By high school, he had mostly stopped medication because stimulants worsened his (severe) anxiety and difficulty eating and sleeping.  He also worked to cancel the extra time accommodations for SAT and AP tests because sitting in a testing room without eating or moving around for 6 hours wasn’t practical for him.  By college, he no longer had ADHD prescriptions, but still dealt with severe anxiety and difficulty sleeping (often went days without sleeping at all as a freshman, and when he’d come home for breaks, he looked awful).

I’m sure there are wealthy people who abuse diagnoses.  There are also people who do have ADHD who make different choices (meds vs no meds, accommodations vs none).   I tend to withhold judgement because I’m aware that sometimes people are choosing between multiple bad options.

FWIW, DC was a good student and a standout athlete in HS, attended an “elite” SLAC, graduated summa and with honors and is now applying to grad school.  Being able to achieve stuff doesn’t mean kids aren’t dealing with real symptoms. [/quote]

He sounds like he has severe anxiety, not ADHD …. [/quote]

Like very, very, very many people with ADHD, he has both.  Maybe learn the literal first thing about the subject before offering opinions?

PP perfectly illustrates the level of discourse on this topic.  My kid was fortunate enough to be treated and evaluated annually by a team that included a psychiatrist, a neurology department head, an MD/PhD developmental psychologist, and a social worker.  But PP, with none of these qualifications and obviously no knowledge, is eager to offer a contradictory diagnosis to an internet stranger without pausing for an instant to consider that — in addition to being utterly unqualified to hold any opinion whatsoever on this topic — they have almost no information.  People like this are exhausting.  [/quote]

DP. Look, your kid might have ADHD. I don't know you and don't know your kid. No judgment.

But there is simply no way that 40% of students at a top college legitimately have ADHD. The most obvious explanation for this is that many kids who do not have impairment are getting diagnosed. That indicates a serious problem with how we are diagnosing ADHD and how kids qualify for accomodations, as well as whether that many kids should have access to ADHD medication.

Unfortunately, that problem is going to cause skepticism of ADHD diagnosis. Which, yes, will have negative impacts on kids who actually have impairing ADHD.

The solution is not to defend all ADHD diagnoses. It's to admit some of them are clearly BS and institute safeguards to prevent over diagnosis. Because this is ridiculous.[/quote]

You forgot “and I obviously don’t know the first thing about ADHD, but I’m confidently offering diagnoses to strangers because my ignorance is exceeded only by my arrogance.”  [/quote]

I'm not trying to diagnose anyone. But I do know something about statistics, and I can tell you that there is no chance that roughly 40% of students at one of the most rigorous universities in the world have neurological disorder that impairs executive functioning.

Are you seriously going to argue that those are all legitimate diagnoses? What is your explanation for it?[/quote]

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